To me, the motion in the grass and trees and clouds is a distraction...

+1 (as much as it pains me to agree with Isaac )

There are cases where smudged parts in an image can successfully convey motion, and then there are cases where they just look like... well... smudged.

While I've seen numerous examples of Big Stoppers doing wonders on water (if you like that effect, of course), I have yet to see (or remember) cloud movements captured equally well. Or other moving parts for that matter.

Without the motion, it's another of the millions. This one stands out well!

To me, what stands out, is the motion in the grass and trees and cloud -- and for that motion it might as well be a photo taken in a city park anywhere.

However, long exposure does show something particular that wouldn't be seen with shorter exposures -- the spray across hundreds of metres below Upper Yosemite Falls; so to me the technique would been more successful on a still day, as a way to highlight the power of the falls.

Mountains are no more indifferent than forests, grasslands, and skies. If you've been close to a rock-fall you understand quite well that mountains are not unchanging.

+1

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To me, what stands out, is the motion in the grass and trees and cloud -- and for that motion it might as well be a photo taken in a city park anywhere.

+1

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However, long exposure does show something particular that wouldn't be seen with shorter exposures -- the spray across hundreds of metres below Upper Yosemite Falls; so to me the technique would been more successful on a still day, as a way to highlight the power of the falls.

+1

While I personally don't care for the knee-jerk habit of some to stop down and make every last bit of "liquid" water into a vapor - I've often thought - if it's so absolutely essential - why don't they just blur everything else in the picture too? This come close to that. I kept looking at the blurry sky and thinking that those clouds are probably extraordinary - and would balance well the rocky range - without the blur. There is one shot of El Capitan in summer by Adams where there exists this balance - and it is one his best of E.C. imo.

There nominally should be (at least for me) compelling reasons why one chooses any camera effect/equipment, whether it is a lens, a camera, a focal length, an aperture, a shutter speed etc.. Regarding stopping down in this instance, I think Isaac's points are well taken...and for me there don't seem to be compelling reasons for doing this.

I am a fan of long exposures. The top half of the image I really like but the bottom half seems disjointed as if it were two images pasted together? However I wouldn't argue with those who like the image as a whole. It is different.

It's not the motion that bothers me (at least not too much), it is the lack of some crisp near-whites and the muddy near-lifelessness of the sky and grass. My brain is saying that the spray from falls and the brightest part of the clouds should be higher in value than they appear. It's the effect I often see from students who do their developing using a black background instead of white (as in comparing the whitest white of prints to the back of the paper). Loading the jpeg into Lightroom confirms this - the highest value in the waterfall spray is 69.6% and in the brightest cloud is 81.4%. To me, they could be higher which just might serve to create a more compelling photograph.

It's not the motion that bothers me (at least not too much), it is the lack of some crisp near-whites and the muddy near-lifelessness of the sky and grass. My brain is saying that the spray from falls and the brightest part of the clouds should be higher in value than they appear. It's the effect I often see from students who do their developing using a black background instead of white (as in comparing the whitest white of prints to the back of the paper). Loading the jpeg into Lightroom confirms this - the highest value in the waterfall spray is 69.6% and in the brightest cloud is 81.4%. To me, they could be higher which just might serve to create a more compelling photograph.

Thank you for your sophisticated comment although I don't really understand everything you said. I am just an amateur photographer. When I take and edit the photograph, I've used my heart more than my brain. Whatever it feels right to me. Pramote

Wow, I had to look at this one a few times to appreciate it fully.From my perspective, the clouds balance out the trees, and the mountains balance out the grass, but with some dynamic interchange going on since there aren't any perfectly horizontal delineations to separate the zones. The contrast between bands/zones probably subconsciously echoes the perceived motion of the grass, trees, clouds, water in some lucky way.Nice.

I would be inclined to go for a slightly more "letterbox" format by cropping up from the bottom, almost to the bottom of the right-hand trees. All that grass detracts from the drama of the trees, mountain, waterfall and sky.

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